I had a long chat yesterday with Brian - Brian is my lovely 70 year old psychologist in Chilliwack - and Veteran's Affairs has been kind/progressive enough to allow us to Skype our sessions until I feel up to transitioning to someone here. And I need to, there comes a point, inevitably, in all types of treatments where you get to a place where someone different is needed, where we would respond t...o a different approach. However, he and I have been through a lot in the last two years and he knows me so well that to contemplate starting over with someone new (and maybe having to reject one or two) is exhausting beyond belief. I don't WANT to tell my story from the beginning again. I feel sometimes that all I do is tell my story and, if you're sick of it, then imagine just for a second how fucking tired I am of it, too.

I have, Micha Marie, blogged a little bit and I may do some more. I find that Facebook seems to encourage us to lose our real voices in favor of quickfast superficial interactions that make us feel (falsely) that we are connecting with the people around us. But, again, there's a part of me who wants this to be easy to read (if you want) and accessible. If you have things you'd like to say to me or questions but don't want to comment, please email me. I find that I have times during the day where I can read, respond and deeply appreciate communication.

That, in a way, takes me back to honesty. We assume that people know us well, that people know us in a WAY that we want them to. I certainly spent the first 5 years going to a GP whom I thought knew me well but now I know, had absolutely no understanding of what I was telling him. I like to think that people around me and my caregivers understand that for me to actually say something about how I feel, then it's really quite bad but I am starting to understand that this isn't the case. I look normal, I can pull it out of my ass to act normal when I have to, I don't favor my injured side and I try to be cheerful and kind to the people I encounter during the day. But, if I've seen you in the last few years, it's a good chance that I didn't hear a thing you said to me - because the pain is there all the time and unfortunately, doing things, getting together with people, travelling and then having to actually be upright pushes the pain past a point which takes all my concentration just to be there.

Brian and I talked about the ol' "fake it till you make it" adage that tells us that if we are unhappy, then pretending to be happy will eventually reap rewards. And, while that may very much be true for some people, I think it's not something that works in the case of a major depressive disorder. For a long time, that 's what I did and here and there, some of the frustration and pain would come bursting through in ways that people may think out of character for me. And, maybe it was, or maybe faking it just made the real bits, the hard moments and the baseless irritation outbursts that much more 'large'.

Neither is true of who I really am and how I'm really feeling. Wanting to understand, wanting other people to understand and finding a way to integrate all these bits into a real, productive, sustainable whole and become the person I 'think' I am all the time - in Brian's words - "is hardwired into you, kid."

Article originally appeared on if you're not a penguin...shut it (http://getsoutmore.com/).